Wide open future

It is a rare moment indeed in which developers have the opportunity to use a new programming language, for developing on a new platform, for a new genre of device. Whether relatively new to programming, or with decades of experience across a multitude of platforms and languages, we are, in a sense, all very much beginners, and it is this that many will find the most thrilling part of engaging with the Apple Watch as a developer. We are all in at the ground floor, so to speak, and none of us knows where it will lead us, what users will expect from wearable devices as they become established as mainstream products, what previously unimagined uses will evolve, and what challenges we will face as developers.

As someone who is developing for the Apple Watch, you are truly at the center of this digital revolution. The company that revolutionized our attitudes to computing in general, and mobile devices in particular, is revolutionizing both its hardware and the ways in which developers are able to engage their users, offering them an ever more immersive experience, while the boundaries between hardware and software become increasingly blurred. More than any device before it, the Apple Watch blends into this new landscape, at once a small part in the larger context of mobile computing, and a radical step forward, into a realm of wearable devices that accompany us throughout the day in closest possible proximity.

So before we get down to any coding, we will take a brief look over the concepts, an important undertaking, as we need to understand what users will expect from a device that in some respects resembles others they know already, in order to delight them with things they have never experienced.

In this chapter, we will cover the following

• A closer look at the watch
• A look under the hood
• One app, four interfaces
• User input hardware
• The Watch as extension of the iPhone